190

Miasma

attitude to gods. The inviolable meadow of a god is a fit symbol ficr the chastity of a virtuous youth, as both are protected by aidds.2so Respect for the gods entails an ultimate restraint in conduct, a willingness to stick at something. Sparing an enemy's sacred places is, like returning his dead for burial, a recognition of the minimum right to respecr enjoyed by any human2st (o., at least, by any Greek; barbarians cannot absolutely rely on such respect). The man, by contrast, who flouts religion despises, in Athenian eyes, 'both the gods and our laws'.2s If he will engage in a conspiracy to annihilate sacred images, he is unlikely to feel scruples about subverting rhe democracy. The superior power of the gods must be vindicated even in morally neutral areas like that of prophecy to keep society sound. Otherwise, religion will decay, and there will be no further motivation for'reverent purity in word and deed'.2s7 When justice does triumph in the world, this is confirmarion that the gods are there. The Greek who then eagerly exclaims 'the gods exist' is announcing more than a fact about categories.2ss

CURSES, FAMILY CURSES, AND THE STRTJCTURE, OF RIGHTS

When mortals violated the sacred in the directest of the ways that were discussed in the previous chapter, the consequence was that 'an agos came upon them.' Agos is here a spontaneous and automatic product of transgression.r As was noted in the introduction, however, it could also be invoked against offenders in curses: 'let an agls come upon those who have sworn the oath should they transgress it.'2 Though curses often demand simply that the offender should 'be destroyed himself and his family', they sometimes specify familiar consequences of pollution: crop-failure, sterility of animals, monstrous births of humans.3 The Amphictyonic oath contains a provision ofthis kind, and continues 'And may they never sacrifice without offence to Apollo or Artemis or . . .'. It is the impossibility of sacrificing 'without offence' that, according to Antiphon, often indicates the presence of a pollution, and that revealed to the Spartans that 'the wrath of 'Ialthybius had struck upon rhem' for the murder of Xerxes' heralds.a Although the agos of sacrilege is in principle automaric, while that of a curse depends upon public proclamation, the distinction is little more than a formal one. In cases of sacrilege, the divine curse was often supported by a human one; in 415, after the profanation of the mysteries, 'the priests and priestesses stood facing west and cursed [the offenders] and shook their purple robes, according to the ancient custom.' (Only one
see p. 7. Lines 40-6 specif,v the narure of the dyog. 'fhere may be an invocatiorr o'agos in the defxio, !Vnsch, n. 90, b 6. ' Soph. OT269-72 (where the connection with pollution is explicit); Amphictyonic 2

I Hdt. 6.91.1. 'Plataea oath':

::: Eur Hipp. 73-Sl. Clf . Aesch. Ag. 3l l-2 on the rramplin e ot'dlxtar 76ptE. 2s5'l'herefbre an alleged violatior ol'sacred places is mt bf relusal ol'burial,'I'huc. +.97. 2-99, while temple-robberv normally incurs this punishrnent.
2s
257

Sec

p.

170

Soph.

l)f

n. l4(i. 8(;3-9I0.
cf

oath. ap.,\eschin. 13.lll; Iiupolis, Demes 3l f., Page, GLP,p.20B: n.92 Austin Ii. I .33-'1. F-or later epigraphic e'u'idence see L. Robe rt, Etudes pigraphiques et philologiques, Paris, 19:18. 3lll with n. 3, citing.t/G3 360.55 f.,526.40-7,527.f15-90, Sc,hwyzer
198.23-5.
a

lst \lcn. D1sc.639,

,\esch. Ag.

1578

with Fraenkel.

,\rtt.

5.t12,

Hdt. 7.13*.2:

cf

.lS

16.25-7, with Sokolowski's note.

192

Miasma

Curses,

Familt

Curses, and the Structure o./

Rights

193

gentle lady refused to take part, saying that she was 'a priestess of prayers and not of curses'.)s It was the spoken verdict of a human tribunal or, through oracular consultation, of a god that confirmed the presence of agos, and the sacrilegious received their most lasting taint when they were 'written up on the pillar as offenders against the gods'. And if the divine curse against sacrilege often had to await human confirmation in order to become fully effective, in the many archaic Greek communities where the magistrates pronounced curses in advance against certain categories of treacherous behaviour,T the oflender was in theory 'held in the agos' (the expression comes from Herodotus, in this context)E from the moment of his crime just as securely as if he had robbed a temple. As a result of this convergence between curses that are automatic and those that are proclaimed, it can be difficult in a particular case to decide which of the two is in question. The passer-by who covers a corpse perfunctorily with soil 'to escape agos' may either be avoiding the taint caused by neglecting a fundamental divine law, or more specifically the curse regularly pronounced against such offenders at Athens by a member of the priestly family of Bouzygai.e Between agos in its two forms there is, in fact, a deep similarity. Anyone Can utter a curse, but the power to curse effectively is normally confined to certain categories - kings, parents, priests, magistrates, and the like - who represent whatever in society most demands reverence.to Hippolytus' 'If only mortals could curse the gods' is a bitter acknowledgement that this power is, in fact, dependent upon the hierarchy of authority.tt t (Lyt.) 6.51, Plut. Ah.22.5. Purifications, by contrast, were perfbrmed lcing east,
p.'225.
o Arist. Ath. Pol.l, Diod. 16.60. l, Andoc. 1.51, above, p; Note too Chryses' prayer, Hom. 1/. 1.37-+2.

185

n.224.

7 E. Ziebarth, Hermes 30 (lt|95), 57-70; idem, in RE s.v. Fluch; Glotz, 569-76; t 6.56. R. Vallois, BCH38 (1914),250-71;Latte,HRGl-88. -fpflbr, 139, !\'. Schulze, e Soph. Ant. 256 with schol.; on Bouzygean curses see

Kleine Schry''ten2, Gttingen, 1966, l9l. to R. Vallois, op. cit. an important article; cf. Douglas, 127. -

rr Eur. Hipp. l+I5; for the distirctive construction ol'araios with dative of disadvantage cL Eur. Med. 608, Pl. Leg.93 I c (empowered to curse), Aesch. ,4g. 237, Soph. fr. 399, Eur. IT 778 (working harm through a curse). ln Soph. Tr.l20l f . (Heracles to Hyllus) ; ei 6E p4, pevto o' t$t / xo,l vg9ev v dpaioE eioaei papE, the word dpaioE seems actuallv to have become a noun, 'curse-demon'. On the word cl. \\t. H. P. Hatch, HSCP l9 (1908), 157-{J6.

There is thus a clear similarity between the agos that seizes the sacrilegious and the curse plonounced against those who violate whltever is socially 'sacred'. To some extent social sanctity even has supernatural forces working automatically in its defence; the Erinyes of a wronged father will probably seek revenge without formal invocation in a curse. For an idea of the ptential awesomeness of a curse invested with the full solemnity of public authority, we can turn to the Oedipus Tyrannus, wheie Oedipus pronounces one against the unknown killers of Laius. It is not the least of his torments, after the revelation, that he has imposed so terrible a sentence upon himself. t2 Public curses of magistrates were aimed against behaviour that directly threatened public well-being or order. The earliest and most famous example comes from Teos;t3 we learn from an inscription perhaps of the early fifth, century that the magistrates were required, three times a year at public festivals, to invoke destrution upon anyone using poisons (ot magic spells?) against the Teians, interfering with the import of corn' rsisting the authority of the magistrates(?), conducting or condoning piracy against the Teians, betraying their territory, or 'devising any evil concerning the commonwealth of the Teians in rispect either of the Greeks or barbarians'; magistrates abusing their authority were probably also included in these curses, which extended in each case to the family of the offender. Both in its inclusions and its omissions (theft, murder, arson, adultery, and the like) the Teian inscription is typical of the institution; at Sparta' subversion of regal privilege, at Athens seeking or supporting tyranny, treating with the Mede, betraying the city, taking bribes against the city's interest, deceivin[ the council and people, adulterating the coinage (?)' and exprting vital foodstuffs were subject to curses, while the citizeni of the Tauric Chersonese bound themselves by oath (with curse sanctions) not to commit a very similar range of offences. ra In Athens, at least, these curses were not an assertion t2 236-75,7441'.,l38l-2. '3 \.I/t. :10.
tn Sparta: Hdt. 6.56. Athens: main text At. Thesm.332-67, cf. P.J. Rhocles' 7" AtheninBoule,()xitrd, 1972,37; cursesagainstfbodexports(clearlytr()tapartol'thc 'l'auric (lhersorrcsc: .$1li' regular curses belore assembly and coulrcil), Plut. Sol.24.l . 36b. For the range ol'offences countered by curses see esp. [,atte, HR 6t]-77, witlt nrut'h frther evidence.

194

Miasma

Curses, Family Curses, and the Structure oJ Rights

l 95

of the magistrates' authority but an expression of the mood of the people, who 'prayed along' with the heralds who pro. nounced them.ts The sacred power whose potential anger they expressed was indeed, in this case, society. (It is interesting that
the people of Athens, no less than their gods, had 'unspeakable' mysteries, aporrhdta, protected byjust these curses.16)

Part of the point was perhaps that many of these offences were particularly hard to guard against on a human level; but detection was certainly not entirely impossible, and the question arises ofwhat treatment from his fellows the man consigned to divine punishment might receive. Upon the killer of Laius, Oedipus imposes a fbrm of excommunication: 'Let no one receive him, or speak to him, or make him a partner in prayer or sacrifice to the gods, or give him lustral water, but let all thrust him lrom them.' A story in Herodotus has the tyrant Periander using excommunication of this kind as a punishment, and there are historical instances of public malefactors being subjected to what appears at first sight to be a spontaneous social ostracism, but could be a survival of a more formal earlier institution.rT It seems unlikely, however, that the seething public indignation would always have been satisfied to express itself in so negative a form. The old Attic law against tyranny made the offender atimos in the archaic sense, an outlaw to be killed with impunity,rB and it is hard to see what objection there could be to killing anybody against whom the curse 'let him perish' had been publicly pronounced. We are dealing, in fact, withjust the kind of offence which was liable to provoke particularly violent forms of popular revenge - destruction of the house,re stoning,20
ts

expulsion of the corpse unburied.2t Already in the Iliad, Hecror tells Paris that he deserves (tc have a stone tunic put on him' for the affliction he has brought on his homeland.22 It would be rash to assume that befbre the institution of'special forms of procedure - at Athens, eisangelia dealt with such cases23 - the criminal was simply left to rhe gods to punish. A recenrlypublished fragment of the Teian curses seems to show that there, at least, the curse could entail outlawry.23a It is clear that, though an ottbnder of this krnd may formally be 'accursed' or 'in the agos', the important fact about him is not that he is a source ofreligious danger. The threat he poses is on a secular level - he pollutes not the gods but the conititution2a and there is no question, as there can be in cases of murder or even involuntary sacrilege,2s of his being avoided through unease about supernatural consequences even by those sympathetically disposed to him morally. As a possibility, before detection, he is certainly feared intensely, but once caught, the feeling he provokes is indignant rage. The same distinction, as we have seen, also applies to a milder form of social rejection; though the murderer may be debarred from the agora and sacred places to protect them from polltion, in the case of the male prostitute or man who has 'thrown away his shield', exclusion is simply a mark of disgrace, and the only pollution his fellow citizens would suffer throu$h his presence is the social one of mixing with a rogue.2 (Offenders of this kind were in many archaic communities subjected to humiliating punishments rather like the'btocks; these involved a 'taint', but it was
('treacherous' generals), Plut. So/. 12. I (aspirants to tyranny); see further the scholars cited by Fehling, 63 n. 258, and fbr sroning of'leaders ibid., n. 262. 2rAbo','e, p,45n.47. 22 Hom. It.g.SGl'. 23 _ Hypereid,es, Euxen. 7-8,29; ct. moit recently MacDowell, Lau, 183-6; p. J. Rhodes, ff/.999 ( 1979), 103- 14.

'and

L)'r. 3l .31 , Ar. Thesm.ll{i3, cL .t/Gr 360.26. ? Soph. OT238-41; Hdt. 3.51.2:-52.6; Hdt. 7.231, Lys. 13.79, Xen. Helt. 1.7.i5, Dem. 25.61 (cf. Dinarchus 2.9);cf. \\'. Schulze,loc. cit. (p. 192 n.9), also Pl. teg. ttSl d-e, Xen. Lac. Pol.9.4-6. It r\rist. Alh. Pol. 16. 10, discussed mosr recently by N{. H. Hansen, Apagoge, Endeixis
Ephegesis against Kakourgoi,

to

,\r.

Th)esm.

331, 352.

13.9-14 (proposal to reassign lan{; murder); Hdt. 6.72.2, Thuc. 5.G3.2 (Spartan kings who filed as generals through suspected corruption); Ar. Nz. 1484 (sacrilegious teachings); Krateros 342 FGrH fr. 17, (Plut.) X orat.834 i (Phrynichus arrd ,\rrtiphon, betrayal); Nic. Dam. 90 FGrH |i.60 (Kypselids, ryranny); Diod. I 2.7t1..5 (.\rgive gene rals). 'o ..g. Hdt, 5.38 (tyrant),9.5.2 (treacherous proposals, cl. Ar. Ach.204-:16, [,vcurg. Leoc. 7l ), 'l'huc. 5.60.6 (general who fils ro press home advantage), Xen. Anab. 5.7 .2 (eerrcral who'deceives' troops),6.6.7 ('traitor'), Diod. 13.U7.5, 91.3, Pl. 8p.7|J5+d
'e

\l/L

Atimoi and Pheuganler, Odense, 1976, 75-80.

2r^ ()hiron ll (1981),p.7fce(b),5-9;cf.,SEGxxvi 1306.23-6(partiallyvindicating Glotz, 465, against Latte, HR69, n. 2l). 2a Xerr. Hell. 2.3.23,26, 5l . 'I'he ve rb used is Tupavopat,, which is referred by lexica nottoltpa(pollution) butlltp4 (outrageousinjury);thoughthisisgenerallycorrect(cl. thefgura etymologica in E,ur. Hel. 1099), it seems likely that in many contexrs Greeks will also have heqrd 70Fa in the word (note e.g. Eur. Bacch.354, Hipp. lCfB, of adultery; Xen. Hell.7.5.lB, a stained reputation; and above all Ar. Eq. 1284, impure sexual pleasures, also the semantic interfeience betweenlOpaandTpq themselves, ZJ/s.vv.). 'or the Greek's sense ol'being under threat in secular terms this is a crucial word-

group.

"

..g.Soph. OC490-2, Eur. /7949-57.

Above, pp. 94-6.

196

Miasma

Curses, FamiQ Curses, and the Structure oJ'Rights

t97

upon the victims that it fell.'z?) on the orher hand, it is probably true even in cases of sacrilege that the.primary public response is one of rage rather than of fear. The forms of mob justice that were mentioned earlier - stoning and the like - were all applied to sacrilege as well as treachery,2E but not, in the main, to other categories of offence,2n and seem to testify to similar feelings in the two cases. Stoning the sacrilegious may have been a means of averting divine wrath,3o but no one ever cast a stone in a merely prudential spirit. The domestic correlate to the cursing power of the king or magistrate is, of course, that of the father. 'A parent can curse a child more effectively than anyone can do ii to anybody else, quite rightly', says Plato, and as instances of curses which everyone agrees to have been fulfilled he cites those of Oedipus against his sons, Amyntor against Phoenix, and rhesbus against Hippolytus.3r Such curses are, in the epic, administered by the.Erinyes,32 who are guardians of the siructure of family authority (younger sons normally have no Erinyes);t, a mo.thei can 'curse Erinyes' against her son, and it is as 'curses' that they describe themselves when formally asked their identity by Athena in Aeschylus.3o These are mythological conceptions too elevated for everyday speech,tt at least in classical Aihens; the vlue to which they relate, however, is fundamental, as is clear in particula from Aristophanes' portrayal of moral anarchy in the Clouds.3 In its defence, Plato organizes sanctions which take us right back into the sphere of public curses and outlawry. Anyone failing to protecr a parent from assaulr by u child is
Above, p. 95 n. 87. 'Taint': Xen. Hell.3.l.9. ,p. 194 n. l9; stoning of the sacrilegious, Fehling, G3 n. 260. Same law fbr temple-robbers and trairors, Xen. Helt. 1.7 .22. 2e House-destruction ficr murder among the Locrians (M/L 13. 13) is an exception. Tyrants and defective leade rs are often stoned; stoning ficr other categories of oflence is sometimes envisaged, but 'so gut wie nie antik und historisch', Fehlig, 63. 30 . Alcaeus, SLG 262.
27

'held in a curse of Zeus of kindred', and the man convicted ofsuch assault is to be banished to the countryside and excluded from the shrines for ever; any free man who as much as speaks to him may not enter city, shrines or market-place without being purified.3? (Secondary though it appears, the contagious impurity of the moral leper here receives from Plato characteristic bmphasis.) Plato goes to extremes, but under Attic law convicaged parents as 'living shrines' is reflected in the claim that they should receive honours 'equal to those of the gods'.3e Disrespect

tion for maltreatment of parents entailed atimia, a kind of

mitigated outlawry.3s Even Plato's uncomfbrtable image of
to them is sacrilese, pollution,ao and danger attends upon it. " is, in the epic, a real constraint upon Fear of- a parental curse action, and the occurrence of one is a dire event which may lead to a drastic reaction.ar If less is heard of it, outside a mythological context, in the fifth and fiurth centuries, that must in large part be because the rights of parents had received such effective protection in secular law. The curses considered so far have supported the structure of authority, and this is their most characteristic function. It is, however, to rights rather than raw power that they relate, and if they commonly consort with authority that is because the rights of communities and parents are in fact very extensive. Even the strong can perhaps not curse effectively unless wronged, while the weak acquire the power to do so in so far as their recognized rights are infringed. The disguised Odysseus can suggest, tentatively it is true, that 'beggars have Erinyes';a2 the myth of the house of Tantalus shows a charioteer and a yoLlnger brother imposing effectir,'e curses, and a daughter with Erinyes;a3 'even dogs have Erinyes', the proverb says (they are, after all, members of the household).oo Euripides' Medea not merely utters curses against Creousa, but in a more serious sense 'is' a
Lrg. tltllb-e. " 3*
ao n2
C)f

2t Cf. p. 45 n. 47

tt Ltg.93lb-c.

t' ..g. Hom.

3o

1/.

31 11.15.204.

9.454,566-72.

1.28. '\eschiu. to Ltg. t]69b, 93 la,,\eschin. l.2tl.

Hom. Od. 2.135 f . (note the fear it inspires) ; Aesch. Eum. 417. It is as curses relating that they are constantly constructed with a eenitive of the wronged party: ci 1o lSfrts E. Rohde, Kleine schriften, 'I-bingen and Leipzig, l90l , ii, 233-5, n ith the qua'lificarion ofDodds, 2l n.37.

o' Hon. Od.'2.135 f .;1/.9.*5+ fI.,566 fI.

or ,\es<'h. Ag. 1433, cf. ibid.,237, Eur. see ll. \\'st, RE Suppl. u. I l6 f .
na

..('\eschin.) Epistle2.5.

Hom. Od. 17.+75.

rt

.lled.l3ti9;on the rights Protectcd by'H'riny'es

ot' dyoeeiteql

d.p.E re

wvyepdE tcal'EpwaE,Ap. Rhod. 3.7

l32l-450.

0-

\lrcarius 3.54.

r98

Miasma

Curses, Family Curses, and the Structure of

Rights

199

curse against Jason, who has wronged her more deeply.as This is, in theory at least, the difference between the curse and the binding spell; the former has irs own intrinsic power, while the latter, an act of aggression unsupported by right, needs reinlorcement through magical techniques, rhe impurity of the grave, and invocation of infernal powers. (I.r practice, no doubt, those who believed themselves wronged often had resource to defxions as well as mere curses.a6) This power of the wronged to curse effectively relates to the more general way in which the world sometimes operates to redress injustice. In Herodotus, in particular, punishment often comes upon individuals for violent acts that are not aflronts to the gods in any direct sense.aT But though the possibility exisrs, it ii noticeable that stories of the 'wronged widow's curse' type are not at all common in Greece. The Spartan defeat at Leuctrain3Tl gave rise to one famous instance; they lost, it was said, because of a curse imposed on them centuries before by one Skedasos of Leuctra, whose daughters died after being raped by passing Spartan youths and who then himself committed suicie o.r.i their tomb.aE In this case, however, it was obviously the existence of a tomb of 'the Leuctrian maidens' at the site of the battle that determined the form of the story. one reason for the scarcity of stories of this kind may be that they tend to be subsumed under the 'wronged suppliant' type; but the fact probably also indicates something about the general ethos of Greek culture.
is natural to consider, in connection with curses, the doctrine of inherited family guilt.oe Several interrelated ideas need to be
Eur. .lled.607 see \\'nsch, nn. 98, 102, 158 fbr the claim by,the author ofadefxio ro have been wronged. Objects, by the same title, can try to curse those who steal or violate them (schwy'zer 272; IG XI\'865). of the tomb-curse, however, I know no explicit early
L

mentioned, not all of them involving Erinyes and curses, which tend to shade into one another even though they are perhaps theoretically separable. The first and commonest is the famous doctrine of Solon and many later moralists: sooner or later Zeus punishes all wrongdoers, and if they escape themselves, 'their innocent children pay ,for their deeds, or their descendants afterwards.'so Perjury is the offence most commonly punished in this way, but any other might be; the moderates in the Arcadian league, for irrstance, decided not to touch the sacred treasure at Olympia 'lest we leave the gods a complaint against our children'.5r A slightly different tone is introduced when it is specified that the ancestral crime is one of bloodshed. The basic conception remains the same, but emphasis shifts from the image of the slow-grinding mills of god to that of a pollution which has tainted the stock.52 In a much stronger form, this idea of the internal corruption of the family iscentral ro the myths of' the houses of Labdacus and Tantalus.s3 In contrast to the preceding cases, it seems essential here that the crimes of'the parents are violations of the order of the family, and lead to similar violations on the part of their children.sa Both myrhs in their most extended form do indeed begin with acrs of'violence against outsiders,ss but both in 'their central and earliestattested core portray a family that, through the most manifold perversions, is gnawing out its own he?rt. The implicit logic is suggested by Pinqfar's summary of the myth of Oedipus: the Erinys, seeing Oedipus slay his father, proceeded to 'slay his
50 Solon 13.25-32.In respect ofoaths cf. pp. 186 fl above, and more generally'l'heog. 731-52, Aesch. Eum.934, Eur. fr.9B0, Lys. fr.53 f'halheim (5 Gernet), (Lvs.) 6.20, Isocr. Bs. 25, Dodds, 33 f., Dover,260;specic insrances willfollow.

It

as

5r Xerr. Hc\\.7.4.34

irstarrt-c(Sclrw-rzer2T2neednotbe one,L.H.Jefferr, TheLocal ScripkoJAr;haicGreccc, ()xltrd, l9(;1,3+8). 4? (:1.J. Ii. Powell, A lxicon lo Herodotus, Ciambridge, 193g, s.r.. ro6. at Fullestversi<r (Plut.) Am.Narr.773c-TT4d,alreadyknown toXen. H11.6.4.7.cf. __ l'ortenrose , l+7 l-., Burkert, SH 7+. Suicide here, as olteir. increases cursing power. For similar stories see p. 107 above (the regent pausanias); plut. Gralr. t2,2gla-r

s2 ptatgvov n oryyovov/nala(ov ngayevmpg,<ov, Eur. Hipp. 1379 f.; cf. Aesch. Szpy'. 265, n.atov aipttov ptopara. F'or pollution language in reference to pasr kin-killing see e.g. Aesch. Ag. 1460, Cho.649 f. t3 Main texts on inherited guilt or curse: Aesch . Scpt. 653-5, 699- 701, 720-91 , Ag. 1090-7, I l86-97,1309, l33B-42,t460, l46B-8g, t+97-1512,1565-76,1600-2;Soph. El. 504-15, Ant.583-603, OC 367-70, 964-5, 1299, Eur. Et. G99-74G, 1306t, /Z

l86-202, 987 f., Or.8ll-lB, 985-1012, 1546-8, Phoen.379-82, 867-88, t556-9, 1592-4, 16l l.
.s4

((:harila).
ae (f f.

euaest.

Glotz, 560-83;J.'f . Kakridis ,'Apa,,\rhens, 192g, <rl'R. \'allois, REA 3,t (1932), gti f .), Dodds, Ch. 2.

l4l-6g (with

rhe commert

Pelops and N{yrtilus: attested in Soph. E\.50+-15, but excluded in Aesch. z{.g. I 192f. Laius and Clhrysippus: not in Aesch. Sept.742 fl. 'fhe origin of this motilis quitt: uncertain: see Lloyd-Jones, I l9-21, and against Deubner's analr.sis of'Peisander, l6 FGrH f r. 10, N{. De lcourt, Oedipe ou la lgendc du conquerant, [,iee , 19.]4, xii fI.

5s

C:f. Pl. Leg.872e-73a, cf. 729c.

?(x

Miasma

Curses, Famil2 Curses, and the Structure of

Rights

20 I

what pollution would have achieved anyway in its own inarticulate way, and it can be difficult, though scarcely important, to decide whether the alastores and Erinyes referred to in a particular passage are spontaneous products of transgression, or due to a spoken curse. Postponed punishment of the kind envisaged by Solon, seen

sons by mutual slaughter'.s6 With this conception of the family crime that leads automatically to fresh crime is constantly intertwined the idea of the actual spoken curse which brings descendants to harm. Imprecations against their own kin were uttered by Oedipus, Thyestes, and, in one variant, Pelops,sT and, in the extended forms of the leeends, the Tantalid and Labdacid woes went back to curses by the outsiders, Myrtilus and Pelops.tt Such a curse seems merely to express in words

by some as particularly 'divine', was criticized by others as

morally repugnant.se Certainly there was nothing quite like it in human justice, by which sons might be punished with their fathers but not normally instead of them. The conception on which the tragedies are based, however, seems to be one of greater moral subtlety. When the smitten Heracles recalls that his father married the daughter of a man he had killed, and comments 'when the foundations of a house are ill laid, the descendants are bound to suffer',6o his proposition has an obvious plausibility in terms which are not merely those of pollution, or divine anger, waking up late to smite the innocent in the second generation. Agamemnon and Aegisthus are not innocent victims, any more than the Polyneices and Eteocles of Sophocles; even Antigone is a savage daughter of a savage sire,6r and it is in Clytaemnestra that the curse of the Pelopid line finds embodiment. 'A godless act breeds more such after, true to its own type.' It is through human sin and folly, 'madness in reasonine and an Erinys of the mind', that the house's
4 FGrIt fi. 157. cf . Heldensage,2lT. Nfyrtilus: Apollod. Epit. 2.8. Pelops: Byzantiue hypothesis to Aesch. Scpt., in Aesclryli Tra.goediae Superstites, ed. \\'. Dindorf, Oxford, l85l, vol. iii,297. 5e Hdt. 7.137.2, Theog. 731-42; cf. f)odds, 33 f.
58 o blur. HF'1258-62. tSoph. Ant.47 I l. For the parents'moral deficiencies reappearing in the child cf. Eur. Hipp.337-43. For Greek views on moral inheritance (by no means uniform), see Dover, 83-95.

so ol.2.3g-42. s7 Hellanicus

tragic destiny is worked out, not in a series ofexternal afflictions besetting the innocent.62 Even when one of the agents is in fact, like Orestes, innocent, it is a compulsion created by past crimes that drives him to his terrible act. We see here the special character of the family crime, for which remedy must be sught 'not from outside, but from themselves, through savage bloody conflict'. In these circumstances it is not surprising to find the doctrine of dual motivation becoming explicit. 'That you are innocent of this murder, who will bear witness? But the demon of the race might be an accomplice.'63 It is sometimes suggested that the idea of inherited guilt, in whatever form, is a post-Homeric development, a product of Delphic teaching or of a creeping sense of guilt.6a f)ivine revenge against the whole family, however, is certainly attested in Homer, just where one would expect it, in connection w'ith oaths. Zeus punishes perjury in the end, if not at once, and offenders 'pay for it at a high cost, with their own heads, their wives and children'.5 It is true that what is envisaged here is a delayed reckoning striking both the criminal and his family, not the complete postponement of punishment to the guilty man's children; but it is hard to see how anyorle who accepted the former possibility would be cjffended by the latter. It is. certainly, plausible that the belief in delayed punishment hardened somewhat in the archaic age, the period that saw the development of the Orphic doctrine of inherited guilt. Where a Homeric Greek, faced by unaccountable misfortune, concluded 'I must be hated by Zeus', or 'I must have c<nrmitted some o{fence against the gods',uo one o[the fifth century might rather think ofsome undefined ancestral fault: 'Such was the willof the gods; perhaps they were angrv with my family from of old.'67 It is not clear that such a change of'emphasis is of any great importance. Uncomfortable though the doctrine of inherited guilt appears to us, anxiety is not necessarily its origin. It
;\esch. Ag.758-60, Soph. Ant.6O3. r\esch. Cho.472-4, 9. 1505-8. uo..g.Kakridis, op. cit., l4l, Dodds,36. 6s Il. 4.160-2, cf. 3.300 f., Hes. Op.2S2-5 (the latter very close ro thc Sol<riarr doctrine). For affliction of'whole families see 1/. 6. 200-5, Od.20.60-7t|; thc Horneric Zeus can hate a whole lamily, Od. 11.436. Hom. Il. 21.83, Od. 4.377 f .; cf . still Hdt. 6. 12.3, \,Ien. Asp.'2lit. 7 Soph. OC96+ f., cf. Eur. Hipp.B3t-3, 1379-tit.
3 2

202

Miasma

Curses, Family Curses, and the Slructure of

Rights

203

protects the belief- in divine justice against crude empirical refutation; for the same reason, perjury, typical cause of inherited punishment in later rexrs, is already liable ro postmortem punishment in Homer.6 Though in some contexts it appeared unjust, in others it could vindicate the gods: Croesus, deprived of his kingdom despite rich offerings to Delphi, was merely being asked to hand back, after a generous period of usufruct, what his ancestor had wrongfully acquir.d.oo poets and historians might devise ancestral offences as a kind of explanatory hypothesis to impose pattern on disparate events; ths Helen and Clytaemnesrra both betrayed their husbands because their father, Tyndareus, had omitted a sacrifice to Aphrodite.To The doctrine was perhaps not even an important source of anxiety. Innocent suflbring was a fact of experience which might be explained in rerms of inherited guilt, but this need not mean that, when not alHicted, the innocent lived in fear. when the,rich Athenian is persuaded by an 'orpheusinitiator' to protect himself from the consequences of ancestral sin by sacrifice,Tr this is perhaps simply a transposition of sacrifices he might anyway perform 'for good luck'. The inherited guilt of towns and communities was perhaps a more serious preoccupation. Often, of course, it was the actual occurrence of disaster that provoked the pious to look for an ancestral crime to explain it; most obviously that is true, as we saw, of the Spartan defeat at Leuctra. we do not know how seriously, before the disaster of 431, the Aeginetans had the sacrilegious deeds of the 490s or 4B0s on their minds.72 The obligation accepted by the Locrians ro pay'maiden-tribute'for a thousand years in expiation of Ajax's crime long seemed spectacular evidence for a communal sense of guilt; it has recently been argued convincingly that the institution originated in temple service of a familiar kind, and only acquired its special character by a process of secondary reinterpretation, and perhaps mere misunderstanding by out6t
e

On the other hand, ancestral guilt clearly influenced the actual behaviour of the Athenians when they expelled the Delians from their island in the belief that they had been 'consecrated although they were impure because of some ancient offence'.74 If Thucydides accepted that Athenian motivation in this case was religious, it is not for us to disagree; but it is interesting to note that ancestral like other guilt is easier to see from outside than from within. A further development in the archaic period, it has been suggested, is the tendency to link together originally distinct myths to form the characteristic tragic vision of a family or race afflicted through three or firur generations.ts In the lliad's account of how Agamemnon received his sceptre, there is no hint of tainted stock; the Cltpri first made him a Tantalid.T6 The extension, however, of the Oedipus saga into the third generation through the expedition of the Epigoni is already mentioned in the lliad,11 while the crimes of the Tantalid house involved monstrous and marvellous elements that Homer might well have preferred to keep out of sight. Even if such a development could be demonstrated, it would be hard to know what conclusion should be drawn about the temper of the age from the fact that poets detected this pattern in'the fortunes of two mythical houses. Noble families continued to boast their descent from the Tantalid or Labdacid line.78 Few of the ideas discussed so far would be likely to have much influence on behaviour, except to the extent that individuals might be encouraged, or discouraged, in their crimes by the prospect of the reckoning being postponed to their descendants. They do not, that is to say, isolate a recognizable category of
siders.73
73 F. Gra{, ,S.SR 2 (1978), 6l-79; diflerently in details, but not implication, Fortenrose,l3l*7. Similarly in Hdt. 7.197 an ancestral sin is invoked to explain a

Il. 3.278 t'. Hdt. 1.91.

Stesichorus,

singular religious requirement. ?a Thuc. 5.1. 75 F. Wehrli, 'Typologische Richtungen der griechischen Sagendichtung', in his Theoria und Humanilas, Zrich, 1972,71-87; he relbrs to K. Schefbld's argument that scenes of violent crime became popular in art in the early 6th century, 'l,IH 12 (1955), l38 f. 76 Il.2.l0l-8, Clpria, fr. ll.4 Allen. Er,en in the 5th centur)', the splendour of'the
Pelopids can prevail over their sullerings, Pind. O/.
71

tu

7t Pl. Resp. !164c. 72 p. I84 abovc.

li.

223 Page.

1.89.

4,404-10. 78 Alcaeus, fr. 70.6, Pind. O/. 2.35-47, Isthm.3.l7; on thc desccnt of-the Eupatrids at Athens firom Orestes see Tpffer, 176 f .

20+

Miasma

Curses, Family Curses, and the Structure of

Rights

205

polluted persons, sprung from criminal ancestors. At Athens, one family did notoriously find itself in this position, but it is a little surprising that no specific case besides that f the Alcmaeonids can be quoted. A considerable number of children were, however, deprived of 'honour' (i.e. in rough terms citizen rights) because of their fathers' offences. In addition to various specific crimes for which this penalty is said to have been imposed,Te one text perhaps implies in general that the children o{'men put to death by the state became atimoi.so Such hereditary punishments could still be imposed in the fourth century, as was finally demonstrated by the discovery of Eucrates' law against tyranny.sr But it is clear that the children's loss of rights is a continuation in mitigated form of the earlier practice, also well attested, by which they shared their father's atimia in the sense of outlawry and were liable to be killed with him if caught.82 The main intention of-the institution is the prudential and punitive one of destroying the public offender 'root and branch',83 and any cathartic motivation is quite secondary. It is in connection with subversive oflbnces that the inherited punishment is specifically attested (aspiration to tyranny, betraying the city, accepting bribes for the harm of the people). Only by inference lrom the rather doubtful rule mentioned earlier can it be concluded that ihe children of men executed for murder or temple-robbing became atimoi; this granted, it remains possible that the murderer's children retained their rights if he chose to retire into exile before the verdict.Ea In the Oedipus at Colonus, Ismene reports that Eteocles and Polyneices initially renounced their claim to the throne of Thebes because of the 'corruption of their race from of old'; but though their subsequent change of heart was impious, the specific point that they were disqualified for kingship by pollution does not receive
emphasis.ss
7"
8o

Whatever their legal status, there were, certainlv, social

to feel unclean. It was open to any sacrificial community to make its own decision as to who was acceptable as a member. Above all, the marriage prospects o[ the children and particularly the daughters were jeopardized: 'who will marry melher/ you?' is, in these contexts, a constant refrain.s But this too is a difculty not confined to the polluted but shared by the socially discredited in general. Euripides' Helen mentions that because of her disgrace no one is willing to marry Hermione, and the same problem confronts the daughter of a state debtor.87 It is interesting that Oedipus, in his portrait of the wretched life that awaits his polluted daughters, seems to draw colours lrom Andromache's picture in Homer of'the hardships that Astyanax will have to undergo as a mere orphan.Es In the second generation, pollution may indeed be something to be held against a family, but as a 'reproach'8e not sharply diftbrcnt in kind from any other damage its reputation might in<'ur. i\ certain residual unease is apparent in Plato's specification that candidates for the priesthood should be investigated to ensttre 'that they come from the purest possible lamilies; the candidate himself'must be untainted by bloodshed and all such crimes against the gods, and so must both his parents.'eo Plato is irl general opposed to inherited guilt e\,'en fbr the worst crimes. Of' the children and family of'the man executed for impiet,v he says: 'If they grow up diflerent fiom their father, they should be gi'u'en due credit for their noble achievement in transforming evil into good.'er It is therefore significant that the one hereditary disqualification for priesthood that Plato specifies should be the taint of bloodshed. It is also significant, however, that this disqualification should be confined to the narrowly religious sphere.
E Soph. OT l+92- 1502, E,ur. ,\rdr. 97+-(i, l6 above. t7 llur. Hel.\133. (Dcm.) 59.t1.

means by which the children of a polluted father could be made

1. I 198- 1200; on thc .\k'rnaconids scc p.

\'1. H. Hansen,

Pheugontes,

()dense, 1976,7 1 and

Apagoge, Endeixis and Epheguis against Kakourgoi, Atimoi, and

73. 72.

Dem. 25.30. tt S'Gxii U7. cf. Harrsen, op. crit., 82 See Hansen, op. cit., 75-80.

tt Soph. O?n l+86 fl., cf . Honr.

te Soph.

1/. 22.+90 fl.

tr Clf . F-raenkel on .\esch.

8a

,4g. 535 f. goes into exile for 3 years to expiate a

(if . \t. Tetr. I p!\.

OC 367 fI.

OT 119+.ln Flur. Supp.'2'2O-8, .\drastus, br runtracting a ntarriagc alliant'e with Polvneices, has 'nluddied' his 'bright' house br'('ontact rlith rne that is 'trttjust'. 'sick', and'urlbrtunate'('sick'ir relation to pollutiorr also I'lrrr. /7" (;!)3) - rcvcalirtelr vasue terms (cf . p. 2 l9 on contasious bad luc'k).
eo

85

ln 90 I-GrH fi. 45 a t,ydian kine

murder committed by his fther.

et 85.ira. cl. 909c-cl. brrt rotc Uil(ic-d.

Leg.759c.

206

tlliasma

This argument invites us to consider ancestral pollution ofan unfamiliar kind. In Aristophanes, the accusation, 'I say that you are from the family of those who sinned against the godde ss', is counte red by 'I say that your grandfathe r was one of the bodyguards of Hippias.'e2 The juxtaposition in Aristophanes suggests that the two forms of taint were not felt to be radically diflerent in kind. The same pillar on the acropolis bore inscribed, for perpetual contumely, the names both of the sacrilegious and of traitors.e3 Of the two taints, one was perhaps
easier to efface than the other. When the Spartans brought up against Pericles the Alcmaeonid crime, his popular support, according to Plutarch, only increased,ea but no Peisistratid could set foot in Athens in the fifth century. If it was through hostility to tyrants that the Alcmaeonids incurred pollution, it

DISEASE, BEWITCHMEI{T AI\D PURIFIERS

A slave in Menander is critical of his master's hypochondria:
What do I suggest you do? If there had really been anything wrong with you, then youod have had to look for a real cure. But there isn't. Find an imaginary cure for your imaginary disease and persuade yourself that it's doing you some good. Get the women to wipe you round in a circle and fumigate you. Sprinkle yourself with water drawn from three springs, with salt and lentils added.t

was surely their carefully nurtured reputation for the same quality that helped to cleanse it.ns One has only to read the speeches of Lysias to discover how chronic, contagious, and hereditary, in consequence of the oligarchic revolutions, the taint of''hatred of the people' had become. And though it may
be hard, in the strictly religious sphere, to discover instances ol' inherited innocence to set alongside inherited guilt, in civic life they exist in abundance. Distinctions bestowed by the Athenian people on foreign benefactors regularly extended to their
sons.eu

The appeal to ancestral credit is one of oratory's standard themes; as a consequence of an act of sacrilegious murder
performed by their ancestors, for purely personal motives, thc descendants of Harmodius and Aristogeiton enjoyed tax reliefand firee dinners in perpetuity.eT

This passage illustrates both the semi-medical use of religious techniques of purification, and the contempt in which such methods were held by enlightened Athenians of the fourth century. The same contempt emerges from a fragment of Diphilus which describes the most famous purification of mythology, that of the daughters of Proetus by Melampus. 'Cleansing the daughters of Proetus and their father Proetus the son of Abas, and the old woman to make five in all, with one torch and one squill for all those people, and sulphur and pitch and much-resounding sea, drawn from the deep and gntleflowing ocean.'2 Diphilus'manner, in metre (hexameter), language (Homeric expressions), and thought is that of burlesque; he ridicules the notion that one torch and one squill could serve to cleanse five people, and seems to have transfeired to the legendary Melampus the healing methods of the lowest contemporary charlatans. The great seer emerges as a pedlar of superstitious mummery. It is a hostile observer again, the Hippocratic author of On the sacred disease, who gives the mosr detailed picture of such practitioners at work. These 'magi, purifiers, begging-priests, frauds' who'purify (epileptics) with blood as though they were polluted' are, he claims, merely
I Phasma50-6.
2

b"'

'\ndocides

ol'his ancestors hostility to tyrann)-,

Diphilus, fr.

126.